Another Post.

“Students need coaches more than they need critics”, says Gallagher in Teaching Adolescents Writing. This single sentence could have been the whole chapter. I have been thinking about graduation and what it is to ‘teach’. I have been guided down a path of typical ‘teacher’ behavior which is to assign homework, mark it right or wrong and critique student’s academic performance with a red pen. Check-check. That’s wrong, that’s wrong and that’s wrong. This approach is detrimental. However, I can see how it happens and I have been on the receiving end of his kind of ‘teaching’. What would have been nice is feedback on what I was doing right and how to improve upon that. Telling me what I did wrong wasn’t telling me what to do right. Much like in parenting when a parent is yelling at a child, “don’t do that!” we don’t give the child proper guidance on what they can do only on what they cannot. I suppose being a teacher contains elements of parenting. It may work best by positively reinforcing the students strengths while encouraging them to work on their weaker areas. They need to be coached in refining skills, not criticized for doing something wrong; the very thing they are supposed to be learning how to do. Sentence Stalking: This attitude is unfortunate. http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/specconn/main.php?cat=behavior§ion=main&subsection=classroom/positive